What Does Tomorrow Hold for Children of Color?

According to a recent ProPublica report, "In 1963, approximately 1 percent of black children in the South attended school with their white counterparts." The report stated that by the 70's, the South had advanced to 90 percent of black children attending desegregated schools." This kind of progress has come to a halt and, in many places, has been rolled back. It appears that due to lax enforcement or outright removal of federal desegregation orders, in the South and elsewhere child of color attend schools where 90-95 percent of their peers look like them.

Information released from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights revealed that one-fourth of schools with majority black and Latino enrollments do not offer Algebra II, and one-third of those schools don't even offer chemistry. Black and Latino students are 40 percent of the population at schools that offer gifted programs, students from these backgrounds are only approximately 26 percent of the gifted enrollment.

These statistics are only the tip of the iceberg regarding racial inequality in our schools. There should be some very serious consideration of why the country has turned away from the goal of Brown v. Board of Education and embraced deepening polarization and inequality in our schools. Moving forward we must establish how to apply the vision of Brown v. Board of Education in the transformed, multiracial society of today.